Although florida still can't be called CNBC just said that right now Bush is up 4% over Gore in florida right now. Florida is the key to this election, whoever takes florida will win.
Perhaps by a freak of nature Harry Browne will take florida. Heh; there's always 04'
From dictionary.com (a proper attribution)
plagiarismn 1: a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work 2: the act of plagiarizing; taking someone's words or ideas as if they were your own
The point is you did _not_ attribute at all when you know darn well you should have. The daily breeze was linked but not credited. The link was 'officials suspended him', rather than 'as reported by' or 'sourced from' the daily breeze. The name 'daily breeze' appears nowhere in your article. Would it be appropriate for me to post 'romeo and juliet by Greg@RageNet' and have a link at the bottom 'hemlock poison' that points to the original by Shakespere? I think not.
I appreciate Hemos coming along and fixing your screwup to keep Slashdot out of hot water. Obviously some of the staff at slashdot agree with my position that what you did was wrong.
So lets, analize this word for word; although the story has been updated (twice) since my first posting the following is all based on the original.
The second paragraph is direct copies breeze paragraphs 5 and 6, followed by your comment in brackets. The third paragraph follows the exact flow of the breeze article sentence-for-sentence with minor modifications, such as changing 'indicted' to 'charged'. Again the begining of the fourth paragraph follows the flow of the breeze article with minor changes to wording.
Some phrases should technically have had quotes around them.
As something slashdotters can relate to, this is no better than building some propriatary software and using a snippet here and a snippet there of GPL code. Adhering to the GPL for a few snippets of code may be a 'technicality' to some but others take it very seriously.
Mr Katz,
You as a journalist should know that plagiarising another journalist's work without giving any attribution is not only unethical but also illegal. The second, third, and fourth paragraphs are taken verbatim or with one or two words changed from the 'Daily Breeze' article without any attribution at all. I realize that you, Mr Katz, believes that no one has any rights to anything non-physical they produce such as music, movies, or the written word.. However it is still the law that you cannot take someone else's writings and claim them as your own.
And just what exactly do _you_ consider a long term investment verses a speculation? What are your criteria and on what grounds of experience or knowledge to you base those criteria on?
Capital investment is an important part of our economy hard work is to be discouraged
No, providing new jobs is to be encouraged. And if you read my post carefully you'll see that long term capital gains are actually taxed higher than normal income.
Don't earn your money. Invest daddy's money. Businesses need bodies to answer phones and assemble widgets. Someone who builds paper as you put it is probably supplying the money to pay your salary, or if you are still in school your parent's salary. If you are not a good phone answerer or widget assembler than it is the investor and not you who loses their savings when your poor performance causes a loss to the company.
But the end result if the investment goes well is that the investor makes a little bit more back on his money than if he put it in a savings account, the government takes their cut, and some fortunate individual is provided a job and perhaps some health benefits so that he can provide for his family.
Investing money is a valuable part of our economic and social system which should not be discouraged through extreme taxation.
When you or your parents bought their house did they have to pay for the entire thing all at once? Probably not, most families pay for their houses by obtaining a mortgage where they have 15 or 30 years to pay. But the home seller gets his money immediately after the sale is completed. This is because someone out there thought he could make some financial gains by providing you or your parents all the money for your home up front (and take a chance that you won't burn it down and default the loan) so that he could make a few points of interest every year. That person invested his money to provide a family a home. Should we discourage family home ownership by discouraging home loans?
If investing is discouraged who will invest?
If people are discouraged from investing then guess who will be responsible for investing to maintain the economy? The government. We will have the same people who've shown us amazing administrative skills by running the DMZ and buying thousand dollar toilet seats for the Air Force.
These policies taken to their logical conclusions will create a system where the state owns nations industry; although the route will not be the same as the nationalization taken after the soviet revoution, government sponsored investing will give us the same result. After all if the government is the only organization who's not put at a disadvantage by owning (parts of) companies than the government will be the only ones who will own companies. The result will be a soviet style economy where the government controlls the jobs, businesses, and economy. People will be paid less, have less choice of goods and there will be lower supply of products.
Because there is no longer a profit motive or even a motive to work (as the state must support you through job or otherwise) there will be reduced freedom in what occupation you can choose or where you can work because you will have to be threatened with punishment to work at a job you may not like for less than you'd like to be paid but a job that must be done nonetheless. Market controls will be put in place to prevent a 'black market' from emerging with cheaper goods provided from non-government corporations; these controls will be touted as "protecting the worker's jobs".
I rather have a free market economy where corporations have the ability to compete not only for market share but for employees as well with as little government handtying to stand in the way.
-- Greg
PS: Holding a stock for over a year is not speculation but a long term commitment to a corporation.
You can't vote with your dollars because... you and everyone else like cheap shoes. You can't vote at the ballot booth because MTV and popular culture have convinced you that if there's no instant gratification then it's not worth doing (like helping third parties so that in a few years there may be _real_ choice).
One beautiful thing about free enterprise is that if a large number of people thought so badly of Nike that they would pay double what a Nike shoe costs just to buy a shoe that isn't Nike then there would be a business to meet that need. Only they won't so there isn't. That goes for any industry.
Bummer that Nike uses sweatshop labor, but with the money I saved on their shoes because of the lower labor costs I can get another RIAA-supplied 'Rage against the machine' CD and get a bus ticket to the next WTO riot! woohoo
There is no product in existance that you cannot either go without or find a small competetor to supply.
The WIPO made the right decision in this case, given the evidence they had. The domain holder chose not to send a response to the dispute arbitrators and so they only had evidence provided by the complaintants (guiness).
If you are sued and you choose not to show up in court and defend yourself, the judge will decide the case based only on the evidence presented by the complaintant and likely judge against you. If you get a sommons to appear in court for trial and decide not to show up you will likely be hauled off to jail. Likewise if you recieve a notice from a domain dispute arbitration board requesting a response to a domain being disputed you had best defend yourself or accept the fact that you will lose your domain.
The WIPO board had no evidence to go on except that presented by guiness and ruled accordingly because the domain holder chose not to respond. Guiness could have gone on to accuse the domain holder of serving the guiness laywers scalding hot coffee which the laywers spilled into their laps causing second degree burns and if the domain holder chooses not to defend themselves against these accusations than the WIPO has no option but to accept them as fact.
So, its a bummer that this dude loses his domains but thats what will happen if you don't bother responding to defend yourself.
You (or your next of kin) have the same options that you'd have if your neighbor's dog bit you or if your dentist pulled the wrong teeth. There has yet to be a law that's prevented individuals from being stupid or negligent, however there are options for those who are harmed by this negligence to seek compensation.
Speculation is already taxed higher than long term investing, thats the way the capital gains tax system works.
A day trader or regular speculator gets into and out of stocks rapidly; any income they make from a stock they hold less than a year is taxed at their normal income tax rate.
Investing, long term, in a company means holding that stock for quite a few years. Any stock held longer than a year is taxed at a reduced capital gains rate (20% or 10% depending on your income bracket).
Lastly, why should long term investing be taxed at a lower rate than normal income? Long term investing helps the economy and the country. Investors take risks which could result in them losing their savings to help new companies create jobs for people and tax revinues for the government. Any income they derive from that investment has already filtered through the IRS via corporate taxes of 36%, then again at the capital gains rate of ~20% (making the total tax burden for that income 56%). If the company goes bankrupt the workers keep all their pay up to the last day they worked but the investor loses all he invested and he cannot even deduct that amount against his regular income (it can only be deducted from other capital gains increases).
Thus investors both help the economy and government while creating jobs and pay a total real tax on their investment higher than their income tax.
Mr Nader, who exactly is holding the gun to your head to drive a Chevrolet SUV, drink a Starbucks latte, or wear Nike shoes? If you don't like a corporation than don't buy their products, own their stock, or take their jobs.
It's clear that the overwelming majority of americans either don't have a problem with the way any of these corporations do business or they do not feel the corporation's activitys are worrysome enough to put effort into seeking alternative products. If everyone in america was so horrified by the activities of a given corporation then they should cease purchasing their products and providing them a labor force. Then the company will have no course of action except to go bankrupt.
If corporations aren't bad enough that you avoid using their products than what justification is there to bring the force of government to bear against them?
If you are curious on what the FBI has on it's files regarding you make a FOIA request. They are obligated under law to provide you with your file unless it compromises national security or an impending investigation (which tells you almost as much as if you recieved it!) Packetstorm has the instructions at the URL below.
The last couple of years I've been contracting at various startups; and while I was paid well enough the managers would allways try to entice me to come on with the offer of options. One place even managed to go public and made some people rich for a short while (till the market recently shot down their stock price). Point being, I'm glad I'm to cynical to take a chance on someone else's questionable leadership and business skills because now I've got good money in the bank and alot of people I used to work for are out of work with worthless option paperwork and years lost to being overworked and underpaid.
Regardless of industry, for every one sucessfull startup that reaches profitability there are nine that failed. And for my personality it's better to have cash in the bank than lottery tickets.
The condensed version is that he sees nothing wrong with globalization, and that we should open up to worldwide trade even more than we do.
Might those who (for an example) weave baskets in america lose their jobs? Perhaps, as its much cheaper to get baskets from basket weavers in indonesia or south america. But, OTOH, all those basket weaving companies sprouting up in south america now need computers and forklifts which they will buy from whoever makes those the best / cheapest (thats us!)
Free trade is not about taking peoples jobs, although thats sometimes a temporary side effect. It's about using the strengths of each region to produce products better and cheaper and thus creating a whole system which is more efficent as a whole. People will end up producing things they are more capable to produce, providing them at a lower price, and at the same time increasing profit margins (which will be reflected in employee salaries).
-- Greg
Re:Zero Emissions with a piston engine???
on
Air-Powered Cars
·
· Score: 1
Piston engines are not the same as internal combustion (IC) engines. IC engines are actually a subset of pistion engines. A piston engine works by expansion of gasses at the top of the piston forcing the piston down. Of course the earliest incarnation was the steam engine where a furnace and boiler created steam that was channeled into a cylinder where it forced a piston down and transfered the up-down forces of a piston into a circular motion needed to drive wheels. The second incarnation was the internal combustion engine where exploding fuel provided the push on the piston. This engine simply uses compressed air to force the piston down and drive the vehicle forward.
If you want to 'fix' the election process the changes have to be made at the state level. The 'all or none' of the electorial college is actually a state mandated policy rather than a federal policy; if you get _all_ the votes of a state rather than just some you will try harder to appease the voters of that state, thus making that state more important than a state that casts its electorial college votes on percentages.
One big problem I see with the current popular implementation across the states is the missing requirement that a canidate have a majority of the vote to win the state. If you have two liberal canidates and one conservative (or vice versa), even if the majority favors liberal policies their votes could be split across the liberal canidates and the conservative canidate would win. The last two presidential elections this hurt the republicans, this time it's going to hurt the democrats.
I would like to see people encourage their states to require a majority, and therefore force a runoff vote of the top two canidates if there is no clear majority. Of course the democrat/republican parties like the way it is now. If there were runoffs they wouldn't be able to scare people into the status-quo with the argument that a third party vote helps the opposition.
Why should government choose which descisions in life someone should make? I chose not to go go colledge (or, more accurately I went a semester then dropped out when I found out I was getting more and a better education by doing than by studying). Why exactly does the federal government declare your college tuition more important than my oreilly books (by giving you a tax break and not me)?
For ever $1000 you pay less in taxes because of college somebody else pays $1000 more to subsidize you because they didn't go.
Instead of the government dictating how I spend my money (i.e. spend it on college or we will take more of it from you) I rather make the choices in life that folloy my best interests rather than what some politician 3000 miles away thinks I should do.
First off I'd like to say that skoda had exactly the answer I was looking for in his post about treating AIDS as a desease rather than a political issue.
After the wonderful 'political' slashdot articles I expected this much of a pummeling of my karma if not more over this posting.
I still assert that it's biologically impossible for a gay couple to produce children and I eagerly await someone to prove me wrong. To create a child requires a sperm and an egg and when you've got those two then you are talking about a heterosexual situation. Two sperm or two eggs cannot combine to create a fetus (and probably not even coaxed to do it with current technology). Therefore my statement is true.. A gay couple cannot biologically produce offspring.
And finally I wrote my original aspestos coated nugget of a posting because I tire of a certain very vocal activist element using harrasment campaigns to silence those who have different views. They preach tolerance but are themselves intolerant. Would you start a boycot of Coke and call and harras all the networks to pull their adds and write congresspeople to pull their business licenses if you found out the president of coke favored windows over Linux? Why is it permisable to do the same thing to people or organizations who might have different but equally legitimate views than you?
Because Christopher Monckton believed that one course of action should be taken to stop the growth of AIDS, the same course of action they are using in Uganda right now to contain the Ebola outbreak you should know, he and any of his business contacts get continuously harrased to such a point that it actually ended his business venture and probably put his livelyhood at risk. All because one activist group was offended over his opinion.
*shug* feel free to mod this down to -1 and burn my karma if this applies to you. You'll just be proving my point.
At least Gore can point to things he's done that have actually improved things. Prescription drugs, you say? How about pharmaceutical price gouging hearings that Gore conducted in 1978? Education? Co-sponsored the bill creating the Department of Education. Environment? Do you really need me to run down the list?
Thats funny, most of what I heard from Gore is how prescription drug prices are too expensive, how the school system is falling apart, and how 'big oil' is taking advantage of american citizens. Obviously on the first two he's done nothing to improve the situation because they are still problems. The last one is thanks to his environmental agenda, as the Clinton/Gore administration have actively worked to lower domestic oil exploration and refining, thus increasing US dependency on forign oil. Not only does this 'feel good' environmental policy increase our worldwide vulnerability but it also takes land away from otherwise innocent american citizens. How many ranchers / farmers / landowners have been kicked off their land or restricted in it's use because of all the new 'federally protected' land the government has usurped? Plenty.
What are we thinking, using their tax money to keep people from dying of hunger, exposure, and disease! God forbid the government should exhibit a social conscience!
Do you see a person on the street and think that you have more right to their money then they have? After all either they or their relatives worked hard and/or smart to earn that money. You did nothing to deserve that money.. How is it that you (or anyone else for that matter) have more of a right to it than the person who busted their ass earning it? Instead of the democrat solution of 'throwing money at the problem' perhaps we should instead get to the root of why people are homeless, out of work, or whatever.
How far of a strech is it that if the government should have a 'social conscience' about protecting poor people that it should also use that same conscience to protect childeren from internet pornography, or protect US citizens from crypto-weilding terrorists? Not far. The constiution does not outline providing for the less fortunate of society for good reason.. It's a slippery slope to go from providing a helping hand to ruling with an iron fist in the name of protecting it's citizenry.
I do not believe that Al Gore is a liar
I suppose if you believe hard enough in santa no amount of proving the thermodynamic imposibility of delivering presents to everyone in the world will change your mind either.
Yes, I read the articles. He could have correctly said he led the initiative in funding the internet, but he certainly did not 'create' it.
I think plenty about issues.. I don't like the democratic stance of more rules for more people. Things like hate crime legislation bother me. Are you any more or less murdered if you are white or black? Everyone gave bush grief over his response in the second debate regarding the death penalty when he was answering a question about 'hate crime' legislation. Something along the lines of 'we are putting them to death what more can we do to them?'. He was smiling because he so obviously won the debate point. If texas is ready to administer the appropriate punishment for the crime then obviously they do not need additional rules to further incarcerate someone based on the ability of the judge to 'read the mind' of the convicted.
(let me just add that the majority of americans, proven by polls, favor the death penalty)
The Democrats believe in equalizing the american people by taxing the rich and giving to the poor. Ask anyone in a former communist nation, government forcing equalization makes everyone except those in government equally poor.
There's some issues for you. But lets get back to the lying thing. Al Gore is a habitual liar, and lies to try to create 'an affinity the audience'. Well if he's lying about trivial things like union songs, doggie medicine, and visits to texas than what lies is he telling about the policies he'd like to put in place? Is he promising seniors a drug benefit because he plans to implement it or because he's creating 'affinity'?? Same with other issues like school aid or environmentalism. When he say's licensing firearms will not lead to confiscation are we to believe him?
Exerpting the first paragraph:
LOS ANGELES(Reuters) - Actor Gary Oldman claims that DreamWorks turned his new film, ``The Contender,'' into anti-Republican propaganda to serve the Democratic agenda of studio owners Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, Premiere magazine reported Friday.
Only difference is that the dems like to rile people up with propaganda pieces like this one where the republicans are just using the more than ample ammunition supplied by Al Gore in a truthful way.
'I took the initiative in creating the internet'.. Sounds pretty clear to me. He lies constantly, and not even about important stuff and the lies are not even well thought out. He told union laborers that his mother sang him a song 'look for the union label' as a baby only it was written when he was 27. He claims his mothers dog takes the same medicine as his mother at a higher cost, which isn't true (and BTW the only reason human drugs are more expensive then pet drugs is that they must pass much more stringent tests involving many years of trials.. The prices reflect this).
-- Greg
PS: ugh what is up with slashdot. I think CmdrTaco has taken the dem's platform to heart... 'Look at those poor lesser processes, why the httpd and mysql process is using all the cycles and not _sharing_ with other processes, well we'll just increase their -nice- bracket so there's more time for the less fortunate processes on the CPU'.
Anyone who's ever had even a rudementary economics class can tell you the minimum wage is the most useless scam imaginable. It's very simple. Companies sell their products at a profit, which is some amount marked up beyond the cost of producing that product. The cost of producing the product breaks down into materials, tools, and labor. Raising the minimum wage only have one of two effects. Either the price of the product increases that much more, meaning the laboror has the same buying power he did before the wage increase because the increase caused inflation; or the company keeps the price the same while decreasing the amount of labor to produce the product, by putting a certain number of the laborers out on the street.
Do you really think its a good idea to have more/bigger government to protect us from the 'evil corporations'?
Lets look at one of the most famous of polution disasters, 'Love Canal'. The fact of the matter is that the company who owned the chemical dump was maintaining the dump in a very good state. Considering they were maintaining it in the 50's the dump site was kept to standards that would even meet current EPA regulations! The county was desparate for cheap land to build more schools and threatened the company with 'emminant domain' if it did not sell. The school district then disregarded all warnings the orginal owners made and dug up and through most of the site unleashing the chemical mess that ultimately occured. Government at work.
Examine some of the things that have been labeled 'corporate welfare'. For example ADM gets a very large subsidy to make ethanol from corn.. I think this subsidy or 'corporate welfare' is in the billions. Ever wonder why they are getting this subsidy? Because someone in our goverment thought that creating this subsidy would help environmental issues by encouraging ethanol over conventional gasoline. The car companies get substantial 'corporate welfare' to develop electric vehicles for the same reason.
Even the most basic things, like starting a business, have been damaged by government control. A hundred years ago it was fairly simple and straight-forward to start your own business. Anyone with the courage and ideas to attempt it could. Now there is so much government regulation that anyone thinking of starting one needs a tremendous outlay of capital to pay lawyers and accountants to ensure the new business meets all the federal and state regulations.
Perhaps some guy in his garage had the greatest idea for a competitor for windows but couldn't afford to go through all the work to start a business. Perhaps that person instead just joined up with microsoft and handed his idea over making a big powerful corporation that much more powerful.
While 'government intervention' might be good in theory it usually has the opposite effect in practice... Making the playing field less fair rather than more fair. A strong government is an invitation for corporations to controll the people by influencing the politicians who run said government.
Finally I'd say that if you don't like how a corporation works then don't buy their product. Nobody says you have to own Nike shoes.
"prefer [...] central decision-making in economic matters"
Central meaning the federal government in this case, yours seems fairly accurate if you ask me. Your answers are certainly not centrist. The things you chose prove this out:
You support...
Federal contol of wages (setting the minimum wage obviously affects all wages above it)
Federal food subsidies; the federal government picks who grows what through economic incentive.
Federal control of trade with other nations
Federal control of apportioning funding to programs (rather than users choosing with fees)
They are not 'dead center', they are clear that they are into reduced government control both social and economic. Democrats favor reduced social control while supporting more economic control while republicans support more social control and less economic control. Totalitarian governments favor tight economic and social controls. This was their point.
-- Greg
PS: Your anarchist statement seems contradictory; how can I have 'economic self-government' and at
the same time reject capitalism, the process of freely buying or selling my property??
Wow, you know perl. I'm so very impressed, especially someone as clued and talented as to be an AOL user.
Your clever regex does not change the facts that the previous poster presented. Weapon confiscation usually follows registration in most instances.
Just two examples; first (I bring this up not to acuse anyone of being facist but to show the most well known instance) Nazi germany required manditory firearm registration and then used that registation information to confiscate weapons from the jewish population. Secondly the state of california reqired registration of SKS (I think thats the designation) rifles and then two years later declared them illegal and used the registration information to enforce this law (i.e. confiscate the weapons).
Lets talk about the constitutional reasons for the second amendment. The founding fathers felt so strongly about this right that they made it the second of ten in the bill of rights, only slightly less important than freedom of speech. The people of the US had just been forced to overthrow their rulers because the rulers had become so oppresive that people would choose to risk their lives overthrowing them than to just accept the state of affairs. Additionally the colonists had no representation in the government and had no way to vote but with their firearms.
The founding fathers feared so much that the government would cease following the will of the people and become tirranical that they created the second amendment as a 'dead man switch' so that the people would have the option if all else failed to overthrow the government and put in place a new one.
Of course there was gun violence in the 1700's. Biologically people are the same then and now and some percentage of the population will be violent. But the founding fathers thought that this was an acceptable price to pay to guard the freedom of the citizens of the new republic.
Political representation (ie, as opposed to direct democracy) is what we have specifically to prevent the common man and his common ideas from infilitrating the political process.
This is not true. There are some very good reasons to have a republic over a democracy. One of the key one's is to protect the minority (or unrepresented) from the tyrany of the majority.
They could have achevied their goal of 'keeping commoners out' by having a democracy that only rich landowners could participate in without the layer of abstraction a republic requires. The reasons for the reforms were _because_ not in spite of government being a republic. What do you think would have happened if the 'wealthy landowners' were given a direct vote to decide if the poor underclass were permitted voting rights?
It was the representitives that the wealthy landowners elected that ulitimately made the decision that the poor were entitled to vote.
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship." This quote is by a British professor, Alexander Fraser Tyler, prior to the american revolution. I'm sure this any many other problems with direct democracy weighed on the founding father's minds when they wrote the constitution.
Unfortunately in this day and age a virtual direct democracy has sprung forth through the use of instant polls to track the opionions of the american people. The result is that canidates play to these polls offering the majority exactly what they want at the moment and therefore sacrificing the major reason to have a republic over a democracy.
We are rapidly approaching a dangerous point in the country, where the majority of voting citizens pay nothing into the system (income taxes) but reap the most benefits. As it is, 49% of the population pays 80% of the taxes. Both Bush's and Gore's plans would make that 100%, with 51% of the popluation with no tax burden. Hopefully you see the problem here. The majority can vote themselves whatever additional benefits or handouts their little heart's desire, without feeling any of the price for that benefit. The majority will quickly vote themselves benefits and vote the country out of a viable economy.
Slashdot Mirror
Although florida still can't be called CNBC just said that right now Bush is up 4% over Gore in florida right now. Florida is the key to this election, whoever takes florida will win.
Perhaps by a freak of nature Harry Browne will take florida. Heh; there's always 04'
-- Greg
From dictionary.com (a proper attribution)
plagiarism n 1: a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work 2: the act of plagiarizing; taking someone's words or ideas as if they were your own
The point is you did _not_ attribute at all when you know darn well you should have. The daily breeze was linked but not credited. The link was 'officials suspended him', rather than 'as reported by' or 'sourced from' the daily breeze. The name 'daily breeze' appears nowhere in your article. Would it be appropriate for me to post 'romeo and juliet by Greg@RageNet' and have a link at the bottom 'hemlock poison' that points to the original by Shakespere? I think not.
I appreciate Hemos coming along and fixing your screwup to keep Slashdot out of hot water. Obviously some of the staff at slashdot agree with my position that what you did was wrong.
So lets, analize this word for word; although the story has been updated (twice) since my first posting the following is all based on the original.
The second paragraph is direct copies breeze paragraphs 5 and 6, followed by your comment in brackets. The third paragraph follows the exact flow of the breeze article sentence-for-sentence with minor modifications, such as changing 'indicted' to 'charged'. Again the begining of the fourth paragraph follows the flow of the breeze article with minor changes to wording.
Some phrases should technically have had quotes around them.
As something slashdotters can relate to, this is no better than building some propriatary software and using a snippet here and a snippet there of GPL code. Adhering to the GPL for a few snippets of code may be a 'technicality' to some but others take it very seriously.
-- Greg
Mr Katz,
You as a journalist should know that plagiarising another journalist's work without giving any attribution is not only unethical but also illegal. The second, third, and fourth paragraphs are taken verbatim or with one or two words changed from the 'Daily Breeze' article without any attribution at all. I realize that you, Mr Katz, believes that no one has any rights to anything non-physical they produce such as music, movies, or the written word.. However it is still the law that you cannot take someone else's writings and claim them as your own.
-- Greg
And just what exactly do _you_ consider a long term investment verses a speculation? What are your criteria and on what grounds of experience or knowledge to you base those criteria on?
-- Greg
Capital investment is an important part of our economy
hard work is to be discouraged
No, providing new jobs is to be encouraged. And if you read my post carefully you'll see that long term capital gains are actually taxed higher than normal income.
Don't earn your money. Invest daddy's money. Businesses need bodies to answer phones and assemble widgets. Someone who builds paper as you put it is probably supplying the money to pay your salary, or if you are still in school your parent's salary. If you are not a good phone answerer or widget assembler than it is the investor and not you who loses their savings when your poor performance causes a loss to the company.
But the end result if the investment goes well is that the investor makes a little bit more back on his money than if he put it in a savings account, the government takes their cut, and some fortunate individual is provided a job and perhaps some health benefits so that he can provide for his family.
Investing money is a valuable part of our economic and social system which should not be discouraged through extreme taxation.
When you or your parents bought their house did they have to pay for the entire thing all at once? Probably not, most families pay for their houses by obtaining a mortgage where they have 15 or 30 years to pay. But the home seller gets his money immediately after the sale is completed. This is because someone out there thought he could make some financial gains by providing you or your parents all the money for your home up front (and take a chance that you won't burn it down and default the loan) so that he could make a few points of interest every year. That person invested his money to provide a family a home. Should we discourage family home ownership by discouraging home loans?
If investing is discouraged who will invest?
If people are discouraged from investing then guess who will be responsible for investing to maintain the economy? The government. We will have the same people who've shown us amazing administrative skills by running the DMZ and buying thousand dollar toilet seats for the Air Force.
These policies taken to their logical conclusions will create a system where the state owns nations industry; although the route will not be the same as the nationalization taken after the soviet revoution, government sponsored investing will give us the same result. After all if the government is the only organization who's not put at a disadvantage by owning (parts of) companies than the government will be the only ones who will own companies. The result will be a soviet style economy where the government controlls the jobs, businesses, and economy. People will be paid less, have less choice of goods and there will be lower supply of products.
Because there is no longer a profit motive or even a motive to work (as the state must support you through job or otherwise) there will be reduced freedom in what occupation you can choose or where you can work because you will have to be threatened with punishment to work at a job you may not like for less than you'd like to be paid but a job that must be done nonetheless. Market controls will be put in place to prevent a 'black market' from emerging with cheaper goods provided from non-government corporations; these controls will be touted as "protecting the worker's jobs".
I rather have a free market economy where corporations have the ability to compete not only for market share but for employees as well with as little government handtying to stand in the way.
-- Greg
PS: Holding a stock for over a year is not speculation but a long term commitment to a corporation.
You can't vote with your dollars because... you and everyone else like cheap shoes. You can't vote at the ballot booth because MTV and popular culture have convinced you that if there's no instant gratification then it's not worth doing (like helping third parties so that in a few years there may be _real_ choice).
One beautiful thing about free enterprise is that if a large number of people thought so badly of Nike that they would pay double what a Nike shoe costs just to buy a shoe that isn't Nike then there would be a business to meet that need. Only they won't so there isn't. That goes for any industry.
Bummer that Nike uses sweatshop labor, but with the money I saved on their shoes because of the lower labor costs I can get another RIAA-supplied 'Rage against the machine' CD and get a bus ticket to the next WTO riot! woohoo
There is no product in existance that you cannot either go without or find a small competetor to supply.
-- Greg
The WIPO made the right decision in this case, given the evidence they had. The domain holder chose not to send a response to the dispute arbitrators and so they only had evidence provided by the complaintants (guiness).
If you are sued and you choose not to show up in court and defend yourself, the judge will decide the case based only on the evidence presented by the complaintant and likely judge against you. If you get a sommons to appear in court for trial and decide not to show up you will likely be hauled off to jail. Likewise if you recieve a notice from a domain dispute arbitration board requesting a response to a domain being disputed you had best defend yourself or accept the fact that you will lose your domain.
The WIPO board had no evidence to go on except that presented by guiness and ruled accordingly because the domain holder chose not to respond. Guiness could have gone on to accuse the domain holder of serving the guiness laywers scalding hot coffee which the laywers spilled into their laps causing second degree burns and if the domain holder chooses not to defend themselves against these accusations than the WIPO has no option but to accept them as fact.
So, its a bummer that this dude loses his domains but thats what will happen if you don't bother responding to defend yourself.
-- Greg
You (or your next of kin) have the same options that you'd have if your neighbor's dog bit you or if your dentist pulled the wrong teeth. There has yet to be a law that's prevented individuals from being stupid or negligent, however there are options for those who are harmed by this negligence to seek compensation.
-- Greg
Speculation is already taxed higher than long term investing, thats the way the capital gains tax system works.
A day trader or regular speculator gets into and out of stocks rapidly; any income they make from a stock they hold less than a year is taxed at their normal income tax rate.
Investing, long term, in a company means holding that stock for quite a few years. Any stock held longer than a year is taxed at a reduced capital gains rate (20% or 10% depending on your income bracket).
Lastly, why should long term investing be taxed at a lower rate than normal income? Long term investing helps the economy and the country. Investors take risks which could result in them losing their savings to help new companies create jobs for people and tax revinues for the government. Any income they derive from that investment has already filtered through the IRS via corporate taxes of 36%, then again at the capital gains rate of ~20% (making the total tax burden for that income 56%). If the company goes bankrupt the workers keep all their pay up to the last day they worked but the investor loses all he invested and he cannot even deduct that amount against his regular income (it can only be deducted from other capital gains increases).
Thus investors both help the economy and government while creating jobs and pay a total real tax on their investment higher than their income tax.
-- Greg
Mr Nader, who exactly is holding the gun to your head to drive a Chevrolet SUV, drink a Starbucks latte, or wear Nike shoes? If you don't like a corporation than don't buy their products, own their stock, or take their jobs.
It's clear that the overwelming majority of americans either don't have a problem with the way any of these corporations do business or they do not feel the corporation's activitys are worrysome enough to put effort into seeking alternative products. If everyone in america was so horrified by the activities of a given corporation then they should cease purchasing their products and providing them a labor force. Then the company will have no course of action except to go bankrupt.
If corporations aren't bad enough that you avoid using their products than what justification is there to bring the force of government to bear against them?
-- Greg
If you are curious on what the FBI has on it's files regarding you make a FOIA request. They are obligated under law to provide you with your file unless it compromises national security or an impending investigation (which tells you almost as much as if you recieved it!) Packetstorm has the instructions at the URL below.
Getting your FBI file
-- Greg
I second this.
The last couple of years I've been contracting at various startups; and while I was paid well enough the managers would allways try to entice me to come on with the offer of options. One place even managed to go public and made some people rich for a short while (till the market recently shot down their stock price). Point being, I'm glad I'm to cynical to take a chance on someone else's questionable leadership and business skills because now I've got good money in the bank and alot of people I used to work for are out of work with worthless option paperwork and years lost to being overworked and underpaid.
Regardless of industry, for every one sucessfull startup that reaches profitability there are nine that failed. And for my personality it's better to have cash in the bank than lottery tickets.
-- Greg
The condensed version is that he sees nothing wrong with globalization, and that we should open up to worldwide trade even more than we do.
Might those who (for an example) weave baskets in america lose their jobs? Perhaps, as its much cheaper to get baskets from basket weavers in indonesia or south america. But, OTOH, all those basket weaving companies sprouting up in south america now need computers and forklifts which they will buy from whoever makes those the best / cheapest (thats us!)
Free trade is not about taking peoples jobs, although thats sometimes a temporary side effect. It's about using the strengths of each region to produce products better and cheaper and thus creating a whole system which is more efficent as a whole. People will end up producing things they are more capable to produce, providing them at a lower price, and at the same time increasing profit margins (which will be reflected in employee salaries).
-- Greg
Piston engines are not the same as internal combustion (IC) engines. IC engines are actually a subset of pistion engines. A piston engine works by expansion of gasses at the top of the piston forcing the piston down. Of course the earliest incarnation was the steam engine where a furnace and boiler created steam that was channeled into a cylinder where it forced a piston down and transfered the up-down forces of a piston into a circular motion needed to drive wheels. The second incarnation was the internal combustion engine where exploding fuel provided the push on the piston. This engine simply uses compressed air to force the piston down and drive the vehicle forward.
-- Greg
If you want to 'fix' the election process the changes have to be made at the state level. The 'all or none' of the electorial college is actually a state mandated policy rather than a federal policy; if you get _all_ the votes of a state rather than just some you will try harder to appease the voters of that state, thus making that state more important than a state that casts its electorial college votes on percentages.
One big problem I see with the current popular implementation across the states is the missing requirement that a canidate have a majority of the vote to win the state. If you have two liberal canidates and one conservative (or vice versa), even if the majority favors liberal policies their votes could be split across the liberal canidates and the conservative canidate would win. The last two presidential elections this hurt the republicans, this time it's going to hurt the democrats.
I would like to see people encourage their states to require a majority, and therefore force a runoff vote of the top two canidates if there is no clear majority. Of course the democrat/republican parties like the way it is now. If there were runoffs they wouldn't be able to scare people into the status-quo with the argument that a third party vote helps the opposition.
-- Greg
Why should government choose which descisions in life someone should make? I chose not to go go colledge (or, more accurately I went a semester then dropped out when I found out I was getting more and a better education by doing than by studying). Why exactly does the federal government declare your college tuition more important than my oreilly books (by giving you a tax break and not me)?
For ever $1000 you pay less in taxes because of college somebody else pays $1000 more to subsidize you because they didn't go.
Instead of the government dictating how I spend my money (i.e. spend it on college or we will take more of it from you) I rather make the choices in life that folloy my best interests rather than what some politician 3000 miles away thinks I should do.
-- Greg
First off I'd like to say that skoda had exactly the answer I was looking for in his post about treating AIDS as a desease rather than a political issue.
After the wonderful 'political' slashdot articles I expected this much of a pummeling of my karma if not more over this posting.
I still assert that it's biologically impossible for a gay couple to produce children and I eagerly await someone to prove me wrong. To create a child requires a sperm and an egg and when you've got those two then you are talking about a heterosexual situation. Two sperm or two eggs cannot combine to create a fetus (and probably not even coaxed to do it with current technology). Therefore my statement is true.. A gay couple cannot biologically produce offspring.
And finally I wrote my original aspestos coated nugget of a posting because I tire of a certain very vocal activist element using harrasment campaigns to silence those who have different views. They preach tolerance but are themselves intolerant. Would you start a boycot of Coke and call and harras all the networks to pull their adds and write congresspeople to pull their business licenses if you found out the president of coke favored windows over Linux? Why is it permisable to do the same thing to people or organizations who might have different but equally legitimate views than you?
Because Christopher Monckton believed that one course of action should be taken to stop the growth of AIDS, the same course of action they are using in Uganda right now to contain the Ebola outbreak you should know, he and any of his business contacts get continuously harrased to such a point that it actually ended his business venture and probably put his livelyhood at risk. All because one activist group was offended over his opinion.
*shug* feel free to mod this down to -1 and burn my karma if this applies to you. You'll just be proving my point.
-- Greg
At least Gore can point to things he's done that have actually improved things. Prescription drugs, you say? How about pharmaceutical price gouging hearings that Gore conducted in 1978? Education? Co-sponsored the bill creating the Department of Education. Environment? Do you really need me to run down the list?
Thats funny, most of what I heard from Gore is how prescription drug prices are too expensive, how the school system is falling apart, and how 'big oil' is taking advantage of american citizens. Obviously on the first two he's done nothing to improve the situation because they are still problems. The last one is thanks to his environmental agenda, as the Clinton/Gore administration have actively worked to lower domestic oil exploration and refining, thus increasing US dependency on forign oil. Not only does this 'feel good' environmental policy increase our worldwide vulnerability but it also takes land away from otherwise innocent american citizens. How many ranchers / farmers / landowners have been kicked off their land or restricted in it's use because of all the new 'federally protected' land the government has usurped? Plenty.
What are we thinking, using their tax money to keep people from dying of hunger, exposure, and disease! God forbid the government should exhibit a social conscience!
Do you see a person on the street and think that you have more right to their money then they have? After all either they or their relatives worked hard and/or smart to earn that money. You did nothing to deserve that money.. How is it that you (or anyone else for that matter) have more of a right to it than the person who busted their ass earning it? Instead of the democrat solution of 'throwing money at the problem' perhaps we should instead get to the root of why people are homeless, out of work, or whatever.
How far of a strech is it that if the government should have a 'social conscience' about protecting poor people that it should also use that same conscience to protect childeren from internet pornography, or protect US citizens from crypto-weilding terrorists? Not far. The constiution does not outline providing for the less fortunate of society for good reason.. It's a slippery slope to go from providing a helping hand to ruling with an iron fist in the name of protecting it's citizenry.
I do not believe that Al Gore is a liar
I suppose if you believe hard enough in santa no amount of proving the thermodynamic imposibility of delivering presents to everyone in the world will change your mind either.
-- Greg
Yes, I read the articles. He could have correctly said he led the initiative in funding the internet, but he certainly did not 'create' it.
I think plenty about issues.. I don't like the democratic stance of more rules for more people. Things like hate crime legislation bother me. Are you any more or less murdered if you are white or black? Everyone gave bush grief over his response in the second debate regarding the death penalty when he was answering a question about 'hate crime' legislation. Something along the lines of 'we are putting them to death what more can we do to them?'. He was smiling because he so obviously won the debate point. If texas is ready to administer the appropriate punishment for the crime then obviously they do not need additional rules to further incarcerate someone based on the ability of the judge to 'read the mind' of the convicted.
(let me just add that the majority of americans, proven by polls, favor the death penalty)
The Democrats believe in equalizing the american people by taxing the rich and giving to the poor. Ask anyone in a former communist nation, government forcing equalization makes everyone except those in government equally poor.
There's some issues for you. But lets get back to the lying thing. Al Gore is a habitual liar, and lies to try to create 'an affinity the audience'. Well if he's lying about trivial things like union songs, doggie medicine, and visits to texas than what lies is he telling about the policies he'd like to put in place? Is he promising seniors a drug benefit because he plans to implement it or because he's creating 'affinity'?? Same with other issues like school aid or environmentalism. When he say's licensing firearms will not lead to confiscation are we to believe him?
-- Greg
Oldman at odds with DreamWorks over ``The Contender''
Exerpting the first paragraph:
LOS ANGELES(Reuters) - Actor Gary Oldman claims that DreamWorks turned his new film, ``The Contender,'' into anti-Republican propaganda to serve the Democratic agenda of studio owners Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, Premiere magazine reported Friday.
Only difference is that the dems like to rile people up with propaganda pieces like this one where the republicans are just using the more than ample ammunition supplied by Al Gore in a truthful way.
'I took the initiative in creating the internet'.. Sounds pretty clear to me. He lies constantly, and not even about important stuff and the lies are not even well thought out. He told union laborers that his mother sang him a song 'look for the union label' as a baby only it was written when he was 27. He claims his mothers dog takes the same medicine as his mother at a higher cost, which isn't true (and BTW the only reason human drugs are more expensive then pet drugs is that they must pass much more stringent tests involving many years of trials.. The prices reflect this).
-- Greg
PS: ugh what is up with slashdot. I think CmdrTaco has taken the dem's platform to heart... 'Look at those poor lesser processes, why the httpd and mysql process is using all the cycles and not _sharing_ with other processes, well we'll just increase their -nice- bracket so there's more time for the less fortunate processes on the CPU'.
Anyone who's ever had even a rudementary economics class can tell you the minimum wage is the most useless scam imaginable. It's very simple. Companies sell their products at a profit, which is some amount marked up beyond the cost of producing that product. The cost of producing the product breaks down into materials, tools, and labor. Raising the minimum wage only have one of two effects. Either the price of the product increases that much more, meaning the laboror has the same buying power he did before the wage increase because the increase caused inflation; or the company keeps the price the same while decreasing the amount of labor to produce the product, by putting a certain number of the laborers out on the street.
Do you really think its a good idea to have more/bigger government to protect us from the 'evil corporations'?
Lets look at one of the most famous of polution disasters, 'Love Canal'. The fact of the matter is that the company who owned the chemical dump was maintaining the dump in a very good state. Considering they were maintaining it in the 50's the dump site was kept to standards that would even meet current EPA regulations! The county was desparate for cheap land to build more schools and threatened the company with 'emminant domain' if it did not sell. The school district then disregarded all warnings the orginal owners made and dug up and through most of the site unleashing the chemical mess that ultimately occured. Government at work.
Examine some of the things that have been labeled 'corporate welfare'. For example ADM gets a very large subsidy to make ethanol from corn.. I think this subsidy or 'corporate welfare' is in the billions. Ever wonder why they are getting this subsidy? Because someone in our goverment thought that creating this subsidy would help environmental issues by encouraging ethanol over conventional gasoline. The car companies get substantial 'corporate welfare' to develop electric vehicles for the same reason.
Even the most basic things, like starting a business, have been damaged by government control. A hundred years ago it was fairly simple and straight-forward to start your own business. Anyone with the courage and ideas to attempt it could. Now there is so much government regulation that anyone thinking of starting one needs a tremendous outlay of capital to pay lawyers and accountants to ensure the new business meets all the federal and state regulations.
Perhaps some guy in his garage had the greatest idea for a competitor for windows but couldn't afford to go through all the work to start a business. Perhaps that person instead just joined up with microsoft and handed his idea over making a big powerful corporation that much more powerful.
While 'government intervention' might be good in theory it usually has the opposite effect in practice... Making the playing field less fair rather than more fair. A strong government is an invitation for corporations to controll the people by influencing the politicians who run said government.
Finally I'd say that if you don't like how a corporation works then don't buy their product. Nobody says you have to own Nike shoes.
-- Greg
"prefer [...] central decision-making in economic matters"
Central meaning the federal government in this case, yours seems fairly accurate if you ask me. Your answers are certainly not centrist. The things you chose prove this out:
You support...
Federal contol of wages (setting the minimum wage obviously affects all wages above it)
Federal food subsidies; the federal government picks who grows what through economic incentive.
Federal control of trade with other nations
Federal control of apportioning funding to programs (rather than users choosing with fees)
They are not 'dead center', they are clear that they are into reduced government control both social and economic. Democrats favor reduced social control while supporting more economic control while republicans support more social control and less economic control. Totalitarian governments favor tight economic and social controls. This was their point.
-- Greg
PS: Your anarchist statement seems contradictory; how can I have 'economic self-government' and at
the same time reject capitalism, the process of freely buying or selling my property??
Wow, you know perl. I'm so very impressed, especially someone as clued and talented as to be an AOL user.
Your clever regex does not change the facts that the previous poster presented. Weapon confiscation usually follows registration in most instances.
Just two examples; first (I bring this up not to acuse anyone of being facist but to show the most well known instance) Nazi germany required manditory firearm registration and then used that registation information to confiscate weapons from the jewish population. Secondly the state of california reqired registration of SKS (I think thats the designation) rifles and then two years later declared them illegal and used the registration information to enforce this law (i.e. confiscate the weapons).
Lets talk about the constitutional reasons for the second amendment. The founding fathers felt so strongly about this right that they made it the second of ten in the bill of rights, only slightly less important than freedom of speech. The people of the US had just been forced to overthrow their rulers because the rulers had become so oppresive that people would choose to risk their lives overthrowing them than to just accept the state of affairs. Additionally the colonists had no representation in the government and had no way to vote but with their firearms.
The founding fathers feared so much that the government would cease following the will of the people and become tirranical that they created the second amendment as a 'dead man switch' so that the people would have the option if all else failed to overthrow the government and put in place a new one.
Of course there was gun violence in the 1700's. Biologically people are the same then and now and some percentage of the population will be violent. But the founding fathers thought that this was an acceptable price to pay to guard the freedom of the citizens of the new republic.
-- Greg
Political representation (ie, as opposed to direct democracy) is what we have specifically to prevent the common man and his common ideas from infilitrating the political process.
This is not true. There are some very good reasons to have a republic over a democracy. One of the key one's is to protect the minority (or unrepresented) from the tyrany of the majority.
They could have achevied their goal of 'keeping commoners out' by having a democracy that only rich landowners could participate in without the layer of abstraction a republic requires. The reasons for the reforms were _because_ not in spite of government being a republic. What do you think would have happened if the 'wealthy landowners' were given a direct vote to decide if the poor underclass were permitted voting rights?
It was the representitives that the wealthy landowners elected that ulitimately made the decision that the poor were entitled to vote.
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship." This quote is by a British professor, Alexander Fraser Tyler, prior to the american revolution. I'm sure this any many other problems with direct democracy weighed on the founding father's minds when they wrote the constitution.
Unfortunately in this day and age a virtual direct democracy has sprung forth through the use of instant polls to track the opionions of the american people. The result is that canidates play to these polls offering the majority exactly what they want at the moment and therefore sacrificing the major reason to have a republic over a democracy.
We are rapidly approaching a dangerous point in the country, where the majority of voting citizens pay nothing into the system (income taxes) but reap the most benefits. As it is, 49% of the population pays 80% of the taxes. Both Bush's and Gore's plans would make that 100%, with 51% of the popluation with no tax burden. Hopefully you see the problem here. The majority can vote themselves whatever additional benefits or handouts their little heart's desire, without feeling any of the price for that benefit. The majority will quickly vote themselves benefits and vote the country out of a viable economy.
-- Greg
read the rest of the thread.